(Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Norway’s parliament outlawed hate speech against transgender and bisexual people on Nov. 10, expanding its penal code which has protected gay and lesbian people since 1981. People found guilty of hate speech face a fine or up to a year in jail for private remarks, and a maximum of three years […]

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Women charged police lines and threw Molotov cocktails at officers in Mexico City on Monday during protests demanding the legalization of abortion in the majority Roman Catholic country. The protesters, clad in the green bandanas that have become the symbol of the pro-choice movement in Latin America, gathered in Mexico’s capital […]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a longstanding U.S. ban on trademarks on “immoral” or “scandalous” words and symbols, ruling in a case involving a clothing brand with an indelicate name that the law violates constitutional free speech rights. The justices ruled against President Donald Trump’s administration, which defended the law […]

KINSHASA (Reuters) — The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the most severe in the country’s history with 319 confirmed and probable cases, the health ministry said late Friday. The hemorrhagic fever is believed to have killed 198 people in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, where attacks by armed groups and […]

(Reuters) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a permanent injunction blocking Alabama from banning the most common method of second-trimester abortion. But two judges from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta used the 3-0 decision to cast doubt on the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence, including that terminating a pregnancy is a […]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lower court ruling that let a pregnant illegal immigrant minor held in federal immigration custody to obtain an abortion last year at age 17 over the objections of President Donald Trump’s administration. The action by the justices provided a legal victory to Trump’s […]

LONDON (Reuters) — Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Saturday that he would campaign for a liberalization of the country’s restrictive abortion laws ahead of a referendum in the coming months, adding that his views on the issue had evolved. Varadkar’s government plans to hold the referendum as soon as May to loosen some of […]

SEOUL (Reuters) — North Korea sent a rare announcement addressed to “all Koreans at home and abroad” on Thursday, saying they should make a “breakthrough” for unification without the help of other countries, its state media said. It said all Koreans should “promote contact, travel, cooperation between North and South Korea” while adding Pyongyang will “smash” […]

LONDON (Reuters) — Drinking alcohol produces a harmful chemical in the body which can lead to permanent genetic damage in the DNA of stem cells, increasing the risk of cancer developing, according to research published on Wednesday. Working with mice in a laboratory, British scientists used chromosome analysis and DNA sequencing to examine the genetic damage […]

BERLIN (Reuters) — Germany’s constitutional court has ruled that a 96-year-old German must go to jail over his role in mass murders committed at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz during World War Two, refusing to overturn a lower court ruling. Oskar Groening, known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” for his job counting cash taken from the […]